If you saw The Empire Strikes Back in Europe or Australia, you also got to see the 25-minute short Black Angel. If you didn’t catch it then, you may have seen it when it resurfaced online last month. And if you still haven’t seen it, maybe a new, full-length version will be more your speed.

Black Angel is legendary among Star Wars fans, but also fans of 1980s sword-and-sorcery movies. This short film about a knight returning from the Crusades, who has to enter a mystical realm and rescue a princess, was directed by Empire Strikes Back art director Roger Christian. And it was shown before ESB in Europe…

Lost for decades, the sword-and-sorcery short film that showed before Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is finally being shown again at the Mill Valley Film Festival. And it turns out the most innovative thing about Black Angel, a technique for slowing down the fight scenes, was purely to pad out the length.

If you saw Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back in the theater in Europe or Australia, you may also have seen a short film called Black Angel. This ground-breaking 20 minute sword-and-sorcery film was directed by Star Wars art director Roger Christian, and it influenced the look and feel of 1980s fantasy films like …